In our 40th annual contractor survey, there are two things that stand out. First, in spite of a global pandemic and the resulting economic downturn, our survey takers reported 2020 was better than we could have hoped. Second, that optimism carries on to how they feel about 2021.
It has taken grit to survive the pandemic, and we’re showing it now
We have had anecdotal reports from manufacturers who have seen their production capacity stretched in 2020 in spite of the slowdown, so I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised by the year’s performance.
And I guess we shouldn’t be surprised about the optimism either. I’ve been in this position for 10 years, and every year we do an annual industry report from industry leaders as well as the contractor survey. I can’t remember a time when our audience didn’t express optimism about the future. That attitude seems to be hard-wired into the construction industry at every point in the supply chain, from manufacturers through trade contractors. We all feel good days are ahead.
That attitude speaks to the kind of resilience we see in this industry. People in construction tend to be problem solvers so when a bit of adversity flares up, their natural inclination is to resolve the issue rather than feel defeated.
Noted psychologist, Angela Duckworth wrote a book called “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.” Published in 2016, it quickly rose to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Her premise is that those who succeed don’t necessarily do so through talent and intelligence. In fact, grit—what she calls the combination of passion and perseverance—is a much better predictor of success than those other, more ballyhooed traits.
Maybe we see so much resilience and optimism in this industry because the people drawn to construction tend to have grit. I’d like to think so, even if there’s no actual proof of it. The people I meet (when we used to be allowed to meet people) tend to evince that kind of determination and resolve.
In a way, what Duckworth concludes from her research and interviews isn’t really all that surprising. We all know the person in high school who far outperformed his or her abilities in the classroom or in sports. They did so through effort. Remember the awkward looking kid who would shoot 200 jump shots after every practice and ended up being an all-conference guard who got a full-ride scholarship? I think NBA star Stephen Curry is that kind of person. He has combined passion and perseverance to become one of the brightest basketball players of his generation. If you ever get a moment, video of his pregame routine. The breadth and effort of it is kind of intimidating, but it is a palpable example of grit.
Curry is an extreme example. We all have grit to some extent, though. Consider what this country and this world have been through in the last year? What we’ve done—our collective effort to make sacrifices and protect each other from a deadly virus—is unprecedented. Never in the history of humankind has the entire population done what we’ve done, and for that we should probably give ourselves a pat on the back.
The last year has been hard. There is no doubt about that. But the fact that we have arrived at this point, with vaccine inoculations beginning to ramp up and an economy that isn’t entirely in shambles, says something about the resilience—the grit—of the human spirit.
I like to think that the construction industry is a leading model of that kind of spirit and resilience. Other industries could learn from the people in this industry about what can be accomplished when we refuse to back down and continue to solve problems.
At the end of the movie, The Martian, which is about the survival of a person abandoned on Mars, the protagonist says, “You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem and you solve the next one and then the next. And if you solve enough problems, you get to come home.”
That’s grit. That’s our industry.
